The Gilded Madonna, Garrick Jones [best fiction novels txt] 📗

small bottle and begin to draw some of its contents into a syringe that I really began to get frightened.

“Four hours?” he asked Kemeny.

“Make it eight. I’m tired and I need some sleep.”

I started to struggle and to yell through my gag, but when Kemeny held his razor to Mark’s neck and said I had a choice, I resisted very little, raising my arse from the floor as Freckles undid my belt, unbuttoned my trousers, and pulled them and my underpants down to my ankles, on top of the rope that bound them. I flinched as the needle went into a vein in my calf, but then as the room began to grow dim, I heard Dennis Kemeny’s soft, “Toodle–oo, Smith. See you on the other side …”

*****

When I woke, the room was filled with light and I was face down, stripped naked, my arms and legs stretched wide, hands cuffed separately to the underframe of the bedhead, and my feet immobilised. I tried to pull them up closer to my body, but felt the distinct cut and burn of hemp rope against my ankles.

From outside I could hear the unmistakable pop and whine of bullets interspersed with the soft, distant thud of larger calibre shells. It was Wednesday, the morning on which high school cadets, newly enlisted soldiers, and marksmen were given free access to the range. Farther to the west of our bunker, the three westernmost concrete towers were taking a sporadic hammering from light artillery, the charges of their shells removed, firing accuracy spotted by a senior officer through his binoculars. Even if we managed to escape, the risk of being hit by a stray bullet or a piece of shrapnel from the artillery pieces as the shell hit the reinforced concrete towers was enormous. There was no way of running back to the fence and the garage where Kemeny’s car was parked without the strong possibility of being shot. No dummy bullets here, except for the two-pounders. On Wednesdays, so the new blokes could get used to it, it was all live ammunition.

I turned my head to the side and coughed.

“You’re awake?” Mark asked quietly.

I raised my head as far as I could and then turned it to face him. He was sitting beside me on the floor, also handcuffed to the bedframe. Although his shoulder was bandaged, he seemed to be naked too.

“Have you been awake long?”

He shook his head. “No, he woke me when he came in, probably about twenty minutes ago. Are you …?”

“What did he do to me?” I wasn’t sore down there and craned my neck to look over my shoulder.

“He stretched out on top of you, Clyde. I wasn’t sure if he was, you know?”

“I don’t think so, Mark. Did he touch you?”

“No!” he said emphatically. “The other bloke, Freckles, he must have some medical training, because he fixed my shoulder up and then gave me a shot, just like you. I think they cut our clothes off.”

“Why do you say that?”

“There’s a pile of strips of clothing in the corner. I recognise the fabric of my three–guinea shirt.”

I chuckled and it wasn’t long before he saw the irony. Here we were, chained up, me probably about to be sexually violated and then killed, and he was worried about his expensive shirt? I smiled at him. “This is the most human I’ve seen you, you know.”

“Don’t get used to it. Once we get out of here, it’s back to fists at five paces.”

I shook my head. I liked this Mark Dioli, even if it only existed for the here and now.

“We have to warn the Bishops,” he said. “I’m not sure if you heard him and Freckles—”

“I don’t think it was David’s and Susan’s parents he was referring to. I think it was something to do with that counsellor he murdered. Freckles asked if he’d see Kemeny at Bishop’s later, not the Bishops’. Did you notice his muddied, short–sided elastic boots? It’s all sand around here. He also said he needed money because they needed stuff. My bet is the children are being held at the property where the murder took place. Remember what Luka said? The smell of petrol and oil—that’s where it was refined from shale oil during the war, at Glen Davis, where Rupert Bishop’s property was. You need to goad Kemeny into letting slip some sign they’re there.”

“Me? Why me, Clyde?”

“Because he said he wouldn’t answer questions from me. Remember the other thing Luka said? You have to save my life.”

Mark groaned a bit and then wiped his mouth on the sheet next to his face. The saliva was red.

“How’s the pain?”

“He gave me something, but I think I’m bleeding inside, not just near the shoulder. Maybe the bullet ricocheted?”

“Happened to me,” I said. “When Marvin Keeps shot me, the bullet passed up through my chest and ripped up my pectoral muscle.”

“Was it you, Clyde? Was it you who had my grandfather put away?”

“Why do you worry about him? It’s unlikely you’ll ever see him again.”

He shrugged, wincing with the pain. “It’s all I know, Clyde. He’s been there all my life.”

“You have friends now, Mark. People who won’t hurt you. Children deserve love, not punishment. You got a rotten deal, and I promise you, if I get out of here alive, I’ll pay for your ticket to Holland myself. There’s a family over there that—”

“Good morning, fellas. Sleep well?”

My heart froze in my chest.

Dennis Kemeny stood in the doorway to his living quarters, dressed in a shirt and tie, with a longish seersucker jacket over it, his hat on, but naked from the waist down.

“You like my work uniform?”

I chanced my arm. “If you’re going to fuck me, I’d prefer you naked, Dennis,” I said.

Despite his threat to slice into me if I spoke, it was an awkward attempt to tough him out, to show I wasn’t afraid. In the back of my mind, I had a small hope that if I refused to kiss